


Broken Ship

by Tealybob



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: CS valentines day, Csrolereversal, F/M, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, captain swan role reversal, hospital fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22680058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tealybob/pseuds/Tealybob
Summary: This is my CS Role Reversal Valentine’s 2020 piece! The artwork was made by the AMAZING cocohook38. She did SUCH a good job, and seeing all of her rough drafts, then now the final image, I’m. In. Love.Hope you like our little project! Happy Valentines Day, y’all!
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82





	Broken Ship

Staleness nailed down every inch of Killian’s skin. The pull that the earth had on his body was stronger than it had ever been - even during his days of land sickness. His limbs had dried to the surface beneath him, and his head weighed down heavier than an anchor. 

He had fallen to the stone ground. That was the last thing he remembered. He could still feel the blow to the center of his back. His neck remembered the impact as if it had happened seconds ago. 

Then again… it had happened seconds ago, hadn’t it?

He had been walking south. He had seen a glimpse of yellow - _her_ yellow. Her vessel was approaching his corner. He had watched her ship veer off course after a blue wagon had plowed into the side of hers. He’d watched her head roll back from the force. He made a straight line to her. He was running to help her, when--

Killian inhaled sharply and tried to blink. The darkness burned fast into a blinding white. He blinked and blinked again. 

Above him, illuminated by sunlight, she stood in all of her glory. Her eyes were sparkling, and her familiar smile was as light as a feather. 

Killian sighed a breath. This was his favorite dream. In a moment she would hold his face in her hands and ask him to stay in that blasted town with her. And he would say yes, Lord knowing he had no choice in the matter when it came to this angel. They would hold one another and talk meaningless words that he would soon forget when he woke.

And while he would have loved to stay and bask in her beauty, at that very moment, he needed consciousness. He closed his eyes and tried to find a different route to his body. 

“Hello there.”

Well, now, that wasn’t how the dream normally went… 

He looked up into the glow again. She still stood above him, but her face was darkened. Her eyes were hooded and a bandage clung to the side of her temple. Definitely not his dream anymore.

“Swan?” 

“Welcome back,” her voice flooded over him. 

The light bouncing off her hair cooled to a hue of blue. Killian looked to the side. The room he occupied was pure white, with spots of color here and there. No, not spots; they were bowls of flowers, and they took residence on nearly every surface of the room. What kind of shop was this? 

“What’s going on?” he managed to say from the back of his throat.

“You’re in the hospital.” Emma inched closer to his side. He noticed her hand resting on the surface he lay on. Was it a bed? A very strange shop, indeed. “You were... involved in an accident,” she continued. 

“What kind of accident?”

“You tried to fight a bus.” 

“A what?”

“You lost.” 

Killian made to sit up, but Emma promptly stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. Try not to move. You’ve got four flat tires right now.” 

Flat...what? “Use words I can bloody understand, Swan.” Killian let his head fall back against the bed as a groan bubbled up from deep in his chest. 

The hand on his shoulder smoothed down his arm, stopping to gently hold his wrist. It eased his irritation, he had to admit. “You were hit by a large car,” she said. 

Killian took a deep breath in. The air travelled through his veins, washing over his muscles and rolling across the inside of his skin. The pulsing in his head told him there was probably significant truth to her tale. 

“Are you saying I’m a broken sail?” 

“A broken _ship_.” 

He hummed, and the pink flowers pulled his attention. He narrowed his eyes at them. They looked too perfect. Too clean - not at all like they exist in the woods. What was the meaning of this? “Are they trying to bring the forest indoors?” 

“What? Oh, the flowers.” Emma ran a hand through her hair, taking in the sight of the room with him. “It’s Valentine’s Day, and you’re a wounded, dashing hero, so…” She may have chuckled - it was too quiet to be certain. “Everyone has sent you flowers. Everyone and their mother, actually. You’re the talk of the town.” 

Killian felt himself smirk. Talk of the town, eh? “They should have stayed so I could thank them myself. A room full of adorning ladies is something a man doesn’t wake to often enough, you know.” Waking to her was more than enough for the pirate, but this didn’t seem the time to bring up his undying love.

Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re in the ICU. No visitors but family allowed back here.” 

IC...CU... He felt the letters filter through one ear and float out of the other, and he could do nothing to keep them. This was stranger than drinking a barrel of ale. 

“For a broken ship, I don’t feel too terrible.” 

A laugh (yes, it was definitely a laugh this time) echoed around him. “Don’t get cocky; you’re on an impressive amount of painkillers.” 

“You’re here,” he found himself responding late to her earlier statement. “You’re not family.” 

Emma took a pause. A pause that turned into a moment, really. She was silent long enough to capture Killian’s sudden undivided attention. He looked up to her face. Deep pink was clouding her cheeks, and she had her lips bitten between her teeth. 

“What, Swan?”

Emma tucked her hair behind her ear. “I may have lied to the hospital staff.” 

“The savior? Lying?”

She nearly cut his words off. “You were alone, and I thought you were going to die, so I got in the ambulance to get you here, and once we were here, I knew there was no family to come check on you, and I didn’t want you to wake up and be completely on your own, and the hospital looks like Cupid puked all over it so I was already in a _stupid_ mindset, and-” 

“My brain is trying to escape my skull, Swan. Fewer words. Please.” 

Emma crossed her arms and studied his face. Thoughts raced behind her eyes - he could almost see them. He began to feel exposed. This was possibly the longest time he had occupied her attention, and her eyes were zoned in on him like a hawk’s. 

When she finally opened her mouth to speak, the door to the room opened as well. A woman dressed in green bags came in with yet another capsule of field flowers. “These are from the first floor,” the woman said in a hushed voice. “They heard about our knight in-- Oh! You’re awake! How are you feeling, Mr. Swan?”

Killian’s eyes flashed to Emma’s, but she was averting her gaze, finding the fabric of his blanket of utmost interest. _Mr. Swan._ To hell with it; why not be a Swan? “Brilliant,” he smiled to the newcomer. 

“Any pain?”

“Should there be?” 

The nurse and Emma shared a look, and the nurse spoke quickly. “You’re on a steady supply of narcotics that should keep any discomfort at bay. But, yes, eventually you are more than likely to feel pain in your current state.” 

“Which would be?”

Her smile fell empathetic. She rested her hand on Killian’s arm, checked the machinery beside his bed, and gave Emma another glance. “Why don’t you relax for a while? We can fill you in on what happened when you’re a little more stable. Or your wife can tell you everything if she thinks you’re able to digest it.” 

His what? “My what?”

Emma barked a loud laugh. “Wow, those drugs are really something, huh?” She grabbed his lower arm and squeezed it. He winced but couldn’t find the strength to pull away. She laughed again and shook her head. 

The petite nurse gave them a lingering smile and turned to leave. “Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way.”

Once the door closed shut, Killian couldn’t stop his questions. “My _what_?” he repeated. 

Emma’s fake smile fell immediately and she dropped her hands to her side. “I told you I lied to them.” 

“She called me-” 

“Why don’t you go back to sleep? This has been a little too much excitement for someone in the IC-” 

“Swan,” he interrupted sharply. “I deserve to know what’s going on.” 

She exhaled hard enough to ruffle his hair on his forehead. “Family only, so I told them I was your wife.” 

Killian was silent. Emma turned a deeper shade of red. 

“You don’t have a ring,” was all he could think to say. 

She shrugged a shoulder. “‘ _I don’t wear it while working._ ’” 

“Why Swan? Why couldn’t we have been Mr. and Mrs. Jones?”

“What?”

“Mr. and Mrs. _Hook_.” 

“Are you serious right now?” 

A laugh escaped his lips, and immediately his stomach exploded in vicious waves of heat and daggers. He couldn’t even move his hand to grasp his abdomen because his limbs were dead weight attached to his sockets. _A broken ship_. She hadn’t been lying. 

For the first time since waking up, Killian looked at his own body. His legs were hidden by the blankets, but one was obviously larger than the other. His arm was extended in some kind of hammock above the bed. His chin rested in a stiff rock of a scarf. His hook was missing, as well. 

_Broken ship_. “What… exactly… happened,” he spoke through the panic taking form. 

Emma must have heard the change in his voice. She reached across to take his hand again, this time as if he were made of porcelain. “You need sleep, Killian.” 

“Tell me.” 

Blue eyes swam with green. She looked fearful. Concerned. Tired. 

_Her head rolled back from the force_. He remembered. “You were hurt,” he began. If she wasn’t going to tell him, then he was going to damn well piece it together for himself. “You were in your vessel.” 

“My car.” She nodded, looking down to his arms. “I was fine.” 

“I had to make sure of that.” 

“I know.” 

“I don’t know what happened after that, Swan.” 

“You ran out to check on me. You yelled my name. I looked up and then…” Her intake of air was quiet, but he heard it hitch. 

She cleared her throat then as if to cough away the memory of it all. “Then the bus hit you, like I said. You have a broken arm, leg, and collarbone. Your hook caught your abdomen. Your neck had to be readjusted, and…” She took a moment to look at his face. “Well, you’re rocking one hell of a shiner.” Her fingertips lifted to tenderly brush his hair out of his face, and he felt the ache of what he could only assume “the shiner” was. 

Her bottom lip hid between her teeth. He again noticed the bandage on her eyebrow. “Your head is hurt.”

“Did you not hear a word I just said?” 

“Are you in pain?”

“You almost died, Killian,” Emma snapped. “You’ve been unconscious for two days and you’re more worried about the damn bruise on my face than you are about yourself.” 

Two days? He’d been in this bed - in these bandages - for two days? Had she been here the entire time?

“I need to know that you’re alright,” he tried to reason. 

“I’m fine.” 

“You’re not, though.” 

“Yeah, well…” 

At the beginning of her submission, her words died on her lips. The silence that followed was loud enough to drown out the dull thudding in his head. 

Though his body was in bandages, he didn’t feel the loss of capability until she turned from the bed and stepped away. Only when he couldn’t reach out to her did he find his body of total waste. He wanted to touch her lip, coax away the bruising, set her down in the bed to rest instead of him. But she stood by the foot of the bed now, six feet out of reach. 

Emma crossed her arms. She kept her eyes cast to the ground, and the beginning of a frown grew above them. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, just above a whisper. 

“I watched the whole thing, Killian. You hit the ground, and waiting for you to stand back up was the longest second of my life. And when you didn’t…” Her head shook. Her hair fell over her cheeks. “I thought you had died. And I didn’t realize how unprepared I was for that.” 

“Is anyone ever prepared for death?” 

“That’s what I mean,” she countered, looking back to him. “People are in danger all around me, all the time. I’ve dealt with death more times than I’d like to count. I feel like I’ve learned to constantly be ready for it. But _you_ … I never stopped to realize that for all the times you come running to save me, you might get hurt.” 

He saw the white of his bed reflected in her eyes. How fragile he must have looked in that moment. 

Killian forced his stiff shoulders to bounce up once - a careless shrug. Pain was nothing he couldn’t handle. Neither was two days away from the world in a cocoon. “I’m a pirate, love. I’ve been through worse.” 

Emma let her arms fall, taking a breath. “I suppose so.” 

“At least this time was for someone worth getting ruffed up for,” he offered.

His pain disappeared into the back of his mind when she smiled. It was a small smile - one rich with her heart. He tried to memorize it as she came closer to the right side of his bed. With every step, he could see the tension in her shoulders relax. 

“Well,” she started. “I guess I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so I could say thank you. So, thank you.” 

He had to tilt his head back to tease her properly, holding her eyes.. “You’ve been waiting for two days to say thanks?”

“And to make sure you would, actually, wake up.”

“That’s all, is it?”

“I guess so.” 

“Oh,” he mused in a chipper voice. “See, I thought you were getting ready to tell me that watching me on my deathbed has made you realize you can’t live your life without me, and you want me there with you for every journey you go on, and ‘please, Killian, never put me through this again-’” 

His mind stopped thinking as the shadow of her face swept down to his. The ends of her hair trailed across his chest, and her hand held his jaw still. He felt her warmth even before her lips brushed him, and when they moulded to his, the warmth spread to every inch of his body. She sighed against his cheek. He had never felt more at ease in his life. 

Emma pulled back. Her thumb touched the edge of his bottom lip. “Please, Killian, never put me through this again,” she repeated. 

His lip pulled into a smirk under her fingertips. “Mrs. Jones, I wouldn’t dream of it.” 


End file.
